Saturday, February 03, 2007

Summary:Benton Harbor is the poorest city in Michigan. Ninety(90%) percent of the people live below the povertylevel and seventy (70%) percent are unemployed. Almostall of the citizens are black. The land is veryvaluable real estate. Whirlpool, already dominant inthe area, wanted much of this land for a small price.It needed approval of six (6) of its commissioners.BANCO (the Black Autonomy Network CommunityOrganization), led by Rev. Pinkney , succeeded in arecall election of a key commissioner. A suit wasbrought to set aside the election alleging fraud.Without sufficient evidence Judge Paul Maloney (whohas been nominated by President Bush to the federalbench in the Western District) set aside the recallelection and scheduled a new one. With serious moneyfrom local political forces the recall was defeatedand the commissioner retained. Thus, the sale wentthrough. Whirlpool detached the property from the Cityof Benton Harbor and attached it to mostly whiteBenton Township. It plans to build a $100,000,000gated community, marina and Jack Nicklaus – designedgolf course. Seeing Pinkney as a danger, corruptpoliticians cooperated with the Prosecutor to producebribed and coerced witnesses to say that Pinkney hadimproperly handled absentee ballots and had boughtvotes (people were paid $10 to say Pinkney paid them$5). Pinkney went to trial in the spring of 2006.There were two minorities on that jury. The trialended in a hung jury. He is to be tried again.

Report:January 25, 2007 you could feel the tension in the BerrienCounty Courtroom of Judge Alfred Butzbaugh as friendsand activists of Rev. Edward Pinkney from across thenation gathered for a hearing in his support. Thehearing was to argue two motions. One motion to arguethe constitutionality of the Michigan Absentee Voterstatute, which makes it a 5 year felony to possesswithout knowledge or bad intent, an absentee ballot,but only a misdemeanor to actually buy a vote. Thesecond motion was to challenge the racial compositionof the juries in Berrien County where, although blacksare 15.5% of the population, rarely is more than 1 in30 potential jurors black.

Rev. Pinkney’s legal counsel, Attorney TimothyHolloway presented argument for the first motion. Heargued that statutes that involve a malum prohibitumcrime were not criminal at common law. The person hadto have knowledge that it was illegal to handle theabsentee ballots. The prosecution, Aaron J. Mead andGerald L. Vigansky, argued back that one only had tohave knowledge that they possessed an absentee ballotbelonging to someone else. They argued that theLegislature wanted criminal intent to be an element ofa criminal offense. They compared the handling of anabsentee ballot and being charged with a felony as thesame as someone that drove their pick-up truck acrossstate line with possession of a gun, who is stoppedand prosecuted for carrying a concealed weapon. Theprosecution argued that everyone knows it is illegalto possess a concealed weapon without a permit andargued that possession of an absentee ballot fallsunder the same interpretation. Attorney Hollowaycited the Michigan Supreme Court case People v Osborn(1912) as well as several other cases that ruled aguilty mind was necessary in order to prosecute. JudgeButzbaugh said he would try to have a ruling withintwo weeks.

Attorney Elliot Hall came to present argument for themotion challenging jury composition. In the motion, heasked that the court move to discovery in theselection of juries for the circuit court in BerrienCounty and striking the selection procedure asdiscriminatory and exclusionary with regard tominority jurors and delay Rev. Pinkney’s trial untilthe system can be reformed and provide him with anon-discriminatory list of jurors called to serve. Theprosecution, however, did not respond to this motionin writing before the hearing telling the judge thathe thought that discovery would be done while theattorneys were present. The judge then told AttorneyHall to gather the material from the clerk and ordereda continuance. Then Judge Butzbaugh called for boththe prosecution and defense attorneys to join him inhis chambers. While in chambers it is my understandingthat the judge informed the parties that going throughthe discovery process on jury selection would notdelay the trial. Attorney Elliot Hall responded that –we would see about that.

Afterward, Rev. Pinkney said “We gave them a spankingtoday!” He was confident of his attorneys handling ofthe motions, stating that we will go to Federal courtif we have to appeal these motions. The prosecutionpresented arguments to the malum prohibitum issue thatdidn’t hold water for the audience in attendance. Manyfelt it was ridiculous to compare the handling of gunswith the handling of ballots. It was an eye openingexperience of a judges going through with a hearingwhen the prosecution hadn’t followed through with awritten response to the defense. Those who havecontinued to observe the court in operation felt thatthe judge was trying to appear to be listening to bothsides by asking for further clarification. However,information about Judge Butzbaugh’s comment about thejury composition motion not having to be answeredbefore trial blew that perception out of the water.